Howling' Steve Thomas on the Important Things

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Black Lives Matter is a rent-a-mob of the Democratic Party, organized, funded and controlled at the highest levels of the Obama administration. The goal of BLM is to drive law enforcement out of black communities so as to turn over the streets to black gangs. This is all a rerun for me.

I lived through the epidemic of gang violence in Brooklyn during the crack era. The city of New York turned over the streets to black gangs. Same sort of agitation in the 60s by leftists led to this surrender of the streets to thugs.

It was a nightmare which I will not describe in detail here.

I find it almost impossible to believe that we're headed toward a repeat of this nightmare. How is it possible that people did not learn from the last go round?

60 years of constant weeping and gnashing of the teeth over blacks has driven us all nuts. We've beatified blacks, simultaneously exempting them from any responsibility for their own lives and problems. White kids have been taught for generations to devise the most tortured explanations to pin the blame for any problem blacks might encounter on whites. That's what nice white people are supposed to do.

This shit has devolved into insanity and farce.

The ideological foundation for this attempt to drive law enforcement out of black communities was already in place when I was a kid in the 60s. I was taught in my undergraduate courses by white lefty professors that cops were an "occupying army" in black communities. What was supposed to take the place of a police presence was never quite explained.

But the cops were evil and racist... that was for certain.

My college indoctrination also taught me that white racism was responsible for the fact that black men dominate the prison population. In fact, I was taught that holding blacks responsible for their lives was a form of racism.

BLM is the expected outcome of this indoctrination of our kids. Several generations of black kids have been told that whites are responsible for all their problems. White kids have been beaten down into apologists and flagellants. Nobody has the courage to say to blacks: "That's enough. Back off. You don't get any more."

I'm not a political activist. I'm not going to do anything more about this insanity than write this bit. But, I want to be the first to say this. I'm retired, financially secure and I don't have to fear blacklisting.

The time to say No! to blacks has arrived. Blacks are responsible for their own problems and their own lives. They must obey the law, and humble themselves before law enforcement, like everybody else. Injustices happen to members of every group. Blacks don't have some special claim here.

The outcome of this capitulation to the rent-a-mob BLM will be black gang control of the streets of many of our major cities. I know because I lived through the last episode.

I live now at the end of a dirt road on top a mountain in the forest. The violence and chaos is unlikely to reach me or my family. What the hell! I will only be an observer as New York City sinks again into the madness of black gang control of the streets.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

This sign, spotted on Route 28 just before the turnoff to Woodstock, is a little defiant. My far left community is deep in cop hatred and apology for black gangsterism. I'm surprised one of the local lefties hasn't defaced it.

I also support the police. They're our thugs. It takes thugs to fight thugs, and I know this from experience.

I moved from San Francisco to New York City in the late 70s. Much to my dismay, I found myself and my family living in Brooklyn in the midst of the crack epidemic. At the time, I was a conventional leftist, true to my college indoctrination.

Black gangs controlled the streets in Brooklyn in those days. Two successive mayors allied themselves with the gangs. This was the result of the same sort of leftist agitation against police in the 60s that you're reading and hearing today... that police are pigs and racists who deliberately shoot and hassle poor innocent black people.

Dumb hippie that I was, I actually believed that crap.

Brooklyn cured me of that. My family was constantly harassed and threatened by black racists. Chased down the street quite often in broad daylight.

The cops had abandoned the streets to the gangs because the political leaders of the city had abandoned them. So, the black gangs owned the streets. When I complained to the cops after one assault on my family, one of them told me:

"There isn't anything we can do about it. You've got to be crazy to live here. If you're going to live here, you'd better start packing. The only thing we're going to do is pick up your body."

The great leftist dream had come true! Those "colonial oppressors," the despicable cops, had been driven from the black neighborhoods and blacks could "take care of their own" as black radicals like to say. The result was chaos, an epidemic of violence, burglary and murder, and streets that were unsafe for my wife and kids to walk down at high noon.

I had knives and guns pulled on me as I walked home late at night from the subway. Hard to say how I escaped being murdered. Thugs followed me down the street cursing and threatening me.

The final straw... my wife was damned near kidnapped at high noon on a busy street corner in our neighborhood. A group of black thugs tried to push her into a van. The cops, usually nowhere to be found, happened on the scene and everybody ran.

I got my family out of Brooklyn ASAP to save our lives.

Mayor Giuliani was elected by New Yorkers who were fed up with black gang control of the streets. He defied the liberal wisdom of several decades and resumed enforcing the law in black communities. The bad guys were thrown in jail en masse. The gangs were broken. Peace returned to the streets of New York City almost overnight.

So, I stopped buying all the leftist horse shit. Yes, blacks can be, and quite often are, vicious racists. Cops are the good guys. Well, at least they're on our side against black gangs.

I didn't care much how the cops took back control of the streets. If they fudged a little to get a murderous gangster off the corner, good for them!

Monday, August 15, 2016

That's what I told my girlfriend this morning. Over the weekend, she taught me her meatballs with tomato sauce recipe. I'm learning to cook some basic dishes that my grandkids will eat.

My last act in life is playing Mr. Mom to my three grandkids. Not complaining. They're a lot of fun. They're also full of a lot of hugs. My toddler granddaughter is three. The twins are one. Boy and girl.

My girlfriend is giving me Mr. Mom lessons. Tips on housekeeping. Good snacks for the grandkids. That kind of stuff.

Took a drive-by of my new home over the weekend, too. Lots of land... almost 7 acres on top a mountain. I'll put in a vegetable garden and also do some landscape gardening. The house could be quite a showplace.

I remind myself frequently that I don't need to clinch my jaw any more. Hadn't realized that I had been doing that. In the early days of my retirement, I noticed that I was clinching my jaw.

"You don't have to do that anymore," I told myself.

My life was a wild adventure played out mostly in Chicago, San Francisco and New York City. I was on edge all the time. No matter what I did, I had to do it the most difficult way possible. Especially with women.

So, I was always fighting with the world and struggling to hold myself together. And, always clinching my jaw.

That is not an easy habit to stop. I'm consciously trying, but the habit keeps popping up.

Everything has changed. I no longer need to fight anything. No longer have to look over my shoulder. No longer even have to worry about money. (I'm fixed for life at the level of a college student with a decent part time job.)

Once I sell my house, I won't even have any bills. No car or house payment. I'll pay into the general house fund with my daughter and son-in-law. Pay for my own cable and internet.

When I get drawn into a political fight on Facebook or some weblog, I remind myself at some point that political controversy has become irrelevant to me. Hell, I'll be lucky just to live through the next presidency.

I'm focused on the grandkids. They're fascinating people already. I am privileged to spend a lot of time with them. I'm involved in their most formative years. Cooking and cleaning for them, and taking care of a yard so that they are free to play without worry... these are the things that concern me now.

My girlfriend is a very happy Filipino. That's the first thing that people notice about her. The reason for her happiness is obvious... she lives solely to serve other people. She's as deeply Christian as a woman can be. She's a fantastic cook and homemaker. She loves to do the things that so many other people consider chores.

The kids did like the meatballs. The twins dug in, mostly into the hamburger. They tried a few slurps of sauce from a spoon. My toddler girl haggled over dessert before she finally gave in and ate meatballs, sauce and pasta.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

When I lived in San Francisco, in my early 20s, I read almost everything Henry Miller wrote. Of course, I read him for the sex. Who doesn't? I was living on the bum... working a part time job and the rent was all of $150 a month... unbelievable, huh? I spent many brilliant afternoons in North Beach reading in the Caffe Trieste and sipping cappuccinos. Last week, I bought two obscure Miller books on Amazon, both from his Book of Friends series.

The price for each of these books was about 4 bucks. Amazon sourced them second hand from a couple of libraries. They are in remarkably good shape and free from marginal notations. The shipping cost more than the books.

I am moving, in retirement, backward to a life similar that how I lived in college and in the years before I had children and a serious job... except that I'm no longer obsessed with chasing after pussy!

Reading a real book, after years of reading almost exclusive on an electronic tablet, is quite a different experience. Better of worse? I haven't decided. The backlighting of a tablet strains my eyes. The paper in old books is a dull yellow.

For the past 25 years, I've been reading technical stuff and the short postings that are common on weblogs and online news sites. 500 words seems to be the optimum length in the electronic medium. I usually aim for that in my weblog posts.

Miller was deliberately verbose. Conversations between his characters run on for pages. He develops thoughts over the length of an entire book. Although both the Book of Friends tomes are short, each is a far more developed intellectual thread than I am now accustomed to reading.

The subject matter of Miller's books is precisely what the titles say... remembrances of his men friends and of riding his bicycle, both important subjects. I've always had one or two close male friends, usually guys with whom I play music or ride bike. (Sometimes both.) In fact, just last night I took a 10 mile bike ride with Big Joe, my longtime lead guitar player friend. We stopped for dinner in the diner afterward.

My life is now quiet and leisurely. I'm hardly ever in a hurry and I have no deadlines to meet. I even drive in a different way... old man driving. If somebody else is pushy and in a hurry, I let him have his way. If you've ever driven in New York City on a daily basis, you know that this is a radical change. Drivers fight like morons for every inch, battle constantly for position and toot the horn in your back at every light and stop sign.

Driving in that atmosphere makes you constantly anxious and pissed off. That's in the past for me.

I play classical and sacred music much more often than popular music now. Classical and sacred music are also more long form and contemplative than popular music. My car radio is always tuned to Sirius XM's classical station and I'm hearing pieces I haven't listened to in 40 years.

This changes the texture of my life very significantly, too.

My babysitting duties will lighten up quite a bit in a couple of months. My daughter is a public school teacher and she'll have the summer off. Life will be very quiet. I'll have two and a half months to read, to contemplate and to garden.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

I am a grumpy old man. In retirement, I'm slowly pushing all annoying and dislikable people out of my life. Not much tolerance left. And, I wasn't exactly fond of people to begin with. In fact I tend to agree that Hell is other people!

Mosaic of Hell, by Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1225 – c. 1276)

I never understood people who could muster the enthusiasm to play office politics in any profession. All I wanted to do was to do my work and go home.

When I was working for a publishing company in the 90s and 00s, a young gay man became my co-worker. (I'll call him "Ray.") Ray was obsessed with becoming a manager, and he imagined himself to be in a duel to the death with me over the position. There were only two of us in the multimedia department, so I was unsure of why we needed a manager. The title, however, was incredibly important to this guy and he lobbied intensely to win it.

Ray never seemed to notice that I had no interest in managing anybody. As I said, all I wanted was to do the work and go home at the closing bell.

His campaign for the position morphed into a relentless barrage of gossip, tattling and scolding directed at me. Ray cornered just about anybody he could find to relate his tales of my deficiencies on the job. He listened to my phone calls with my wife, and duly reported the content (as best as he could discern it) to the entire staff.

This amused and perplexed me, because this was entirely a one way battle. I was making a shitload of money, doing work that I mostly enjoyed, and having a hell of a lot of fun away from the job with my late wife, Myrna.

My antagonistic co-worker was (as I said) gay, and his entire working and social life was organized around his gaydom. He'd learned in college that bitching about his perceived persecution earned him points. (His father was a doctor who owned a huge estate!) HR in that era was determined to promote Diversity, and my competitor was all they had... the white son of a rich doctor became the de facto nigger of our department because of his gaydom. There were no blacks in our field, and I doubt whether there are any to this day. So, HR made do with what it had.

The one way battle raged on for a year and a half. Co-workers would often stop me to relate the latest awful gossip about me that Ray had spread around the office. My worst sins were being hetero, and being outspokenly anti-PC. During this era, everybody was obliged to bleat on endlessly about how concerned they were about gays, how delightfully wonderful gay theater and sex clubs were, etc. I showed no interest in such things, and I made it clear that I didn't regard gaydom as a form of sainthood. This was probably my greatest sin, according to my ambitious co-worker.

When he discovered that I was Catholic, Ray was aghast and he asked me during a meeting with about a dozen people present whether I attended church every Sunday.

"Well," I answered, "yes I do."

In the multimedia biz in those days, being openly religious was the kiss of death. Ray was zeroing in for the kill. He had exposed me as unfashionable.

Myrna had ambitions for me that I didn't share. She wanted me to join the great battle to be manager of one person. I declined, which infuriated her. I tried to tell her that there was always another job waiting for me, but that did not placate her. She wanted me to do battle for the sake of my honor, but I declined.

Everything changed pretty dramatically after 9/11. My antagonist and I watched the attack from our office windows. He softened a bit in recognition of our shared experience of incredible brutal tragedy.

Then the financial collapse in the aftermath of 9/11 brought the great one way battle to a conclusion. Ray's campaign to be a manager finally succeeded. But, irony of ironies, the department was dissolved in a reorganization, I was transferred to another department, and he became a manager with no personnel. But, his business card read "Manager!"

His campaign of vilification and gossip had succeeded, however. My new manager hated me from the beginning and never wanted me on her staff. The company bought me out with a bucket of money to prevent me from filing a lawsuit, and maybe because my CEO genuinely liked me, and I moved on to freelancing and contracting. Leaving seemed like a disappointment at the time, but I later was glad to have left. Being on staff at a company never agreed with me. I preferred to be on my own.

Precisely because of the hell of office politics.

The best thing about retirement is that I can just about entirely push the hell that is other people out of my life. I focus on the work that I want to do now without regard to bosses, office politics or marketability.

Saturday, April 09, 2016

Tough week of babysitting, so the house is a mess. The grandkids' constant demands exhaust me emotionally more than physically. I have a great time with them, but when I come home after a day with them I need a nap. So, at 1:30 a.m., I'm up and trying to get the house in acceptable shape for the girlfriend.

Ah, for the days of wine and roses, back when Myrna and I were both making the Big Bucks in Manhattan. We spent the week in the apartment in the city and weekends and holidays in the cabin in Woodstock, and we paid other people to do all the dirty and unpleasant work.

The doorman took the deliveries and dealt with the service people in our Manhattan residence. The Life of Riley.

I'm just an old widower living happily out at the end of a dirt road in the woods in the mountains. I've got somewhere between a year to three years to continue enjoying that before the house sells and I move into a new in-law unit with the kids so that I can be available full time as Mr. Mom to the grandchildren.

Life is no longer exciting and challenging, as it was back in the day, but it is pleasant and gratifying.

The twins won't be babies much longer. They are approaching their first birthday, and they are eager to stand up on their own and walk. Morning and afternoon play sessions now include stints on the walker for both. Next fall, my toddler girl will be headed off to pre-school, so my babysitting demands will diminish. I'll miss her, but she needs to socialize with other kids, and I'll be able to focus more on the development of the twins with her gone for half the day.

The house really does need a full spring cleaning. It will go up for sale in a couple of months, so I'm going to have to keep it presentable for showing. Time also to start throwing away three decades worth of accumulated junk in the attic, closets and garage. The next moving day should be my last, except for that fateful move to the nursing home.

Retirement has been grand. I've had to slowly acclimate to the role. For the first year and a half, I kept thinking that I would go back to work. I worried about money a lot, and I felt like I should be accomplishing something, instead of just enjoying myself.

Slowly, I found things to do that brought me much more satisfaction than getting up and going to a job. Despite the fact that I did some very interesting and challenging work in fields that are quite often considered glamorous, I had "jobs," not a "career." I was a supportive tech worker. Never really wanted to be a manager. Too much work and too much stress.

Instead of struggling to make more money, I caved into retirement, and cut my bills and expenses down to the bare minimum. What a relief! Once the house is sold, I will have no bills, lifetime security at a modest level and the most minimal expenses.

Playing classical music, drawing and painting for my own satisfaction have gradually filled up my time. Spending time outdoors gardening and bicycling is joyful. I spent so many years in gray high rise office buildings.

And, of course, the grandkids really filled in all the other spaces.

The bathroom is clean and it's time to move on to the kitchen. If I'm lucky, the girlfriend will leave me a week's worth of meals.

Thursday, April 07, 2016

No matter what you write, somebody gets pissed off about it. Goes with the territory. I'm particularly blessed to have a couple of home town harpies who go ballistic every time I suggest that I might exert some attraction on women.

I also have home town relatives who, when they aren't asking for money, curse me for being the world's most appalling son of a bitch.

What the fuck can you do?

I left my teeny tiny hometown in the cornfields in Illinois, among other reasons, to get the fuck away from screeching harpies who figured that I owed them some explanation about what I did with my life... particularly my sex life.

And what a sex life I've enjoyed! Eat your hearts out bitches!

I spent my adult life in San Franciso and New York City. Nobody gives a shit what you do in these big cities, girls! By the standards of my piss ant little home town, I'm a pretty wild character. By the standards of the Big City, I'm a pretty damned normal guy with an occasional kink.

Sex was a particularly joyful and plentiful part of my life. My late wife, Myrna was drop dead gorgeous and she was a once a day (and sometimes twice a day on weekends) Filipina. (I'll get disgraceful e-mails from the harpies on this account. They're brutally vicious racists, too.)

I've had every kind of woman, every race, every body type, every type of character... I've had it all! God bless me, I triumphed over small town simple minded asshole Puritanism. I've enjoyed every kind of sexual pleasure with a women (or with more than one woman) imaginable.

Women loved me fiercely and passionately. Thank you, God!

You can bitch and moan all you like. You can try to engage me in a pissing match, but you probably won't even succeed there.

The joke's on you if you think I'm worried because you're pissed off about this. Sex was an absolutely fantastic part of my life, in every respect... even the procreation and the grandkids things.

I won the battle of life in just about every respect. Sure, there were some very tough tragedies along the way. That's part of the cost of an adventurous, exciting and romantic life. I left it all on the field. No regrets.

So, bitch away. It's all jealousy. Piss and moan all you like. Be creative. I don't owe you (or anybody else) shit. Rot away in jealousy in your sex starved little prison in the cornfields. You deserve it.

Friday, March 11, 2016

Back in the day when Myrna was still in this vale of tears, back when we had two big incomes and a doorman apartment in Manhattan, we commonly threw down 100 bucks apiece for dinner ("Like it was nothing!" as they say in my hometown) in a new and interesting restaurant. Those days are long gone. Now, I'm an old widowed grandpa living on a retirement budget. My everyday dress is sweats.

So, it's a pretty big deal that I'm going out to dinner at a swanky restaurant this weekend. Dinner and dancing! And the invitation says to "Dress to Impress!"

In true retired grandpa fashion, I'm not picking up the tab. No, I was invited out for the 40th birthday bash of the groom at a wedding I attended last fall. (I think of the couple who got married as "kids," because they are the age of my daughters.)

So, I'll wipe off the grandbaby puke, doff the sweats for one night and put on the Ritz to the best of my ability... which is... well, moderate. My waistline has expanded and the old suits don't fit. So the best I can do is a nice blue blazer and slacks. With the Magic Waistband.

I'll even wear the Jerry Garcia red tie I bought in Philadelphia oh so long ago when I visited Myrna in the hotel she stayed in on a business trip. Her law firm always put her up in a 5 star hotel.

Don't know if I'll ever see that kind of luxury again. Oh, well... I got plenty of that back in the days of wine and roses.

This weekend's go out reminds me of an Alberta Hunter tune that Myrna and I sang together, that really expresses the breathless drama that Myrna loved... "Darktown Strutters' Ball."

Ain't that elegant? (I confess. I do miss so much being called "honey" all the time!)

The "Darktown" part of that song is precious, isn't it? The concept of the tune is totally out of whack with today's PC stupidity. Many a night, Myrna and I did take the taxi up to Darktown, that is to say Harlem, to go to one of our favorite blues and jazz clubs on 125th St.

The black men dressed up in their best suits with two-tone shoes. The black women dressed in their Sunday finest, including those huge black hats with the netting and birds on top. It was like being in a Thin Man movie. My late wife was named after Myrna Loy, a huge Hollywood movie startlet much loved in the Philippines.

Life has changed. It always does. I can never understand the people who talk about how they are politically advanced critters because they embrace change. What the hell choice do we have but to embrace change? It's coming whether or not we want it, and we don't necessarily dictate what that change will be.

Myrna loved drama, excitement, wild nights out on the town and putting on the Ritz. That was a wild and beautiful part of my life. There are some stories I could tell... I don't know if I ever will.

I can look back now in wonder and gratitude, instead of aching and crying because she is gone.

And, it's out this weekend for another chapter. It's not like old times. It never is.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

For people under 40, it must seem as if the institutionalized Diversity crusade has always been in place. In fact, that madness entered the office world in force in the late 90s. At that time, the huge Diversity bureaucracy barely existed.

During that era, I worked for a variety of corporations, developing content management systems for online courses, as well as publishing and maintaining those courses.

To my never ending amazement, I played a role in institutionalizing Diversity Training. The impetus for this shit was lawsuit avoidance. In the midst of the economic boom of the 90s, filing a lawsuit against one's employer for any and all types of discrimination was considered by many employees to be the way to win the lottery. Managers became desperate to immunize themselves against liability and they came to a sort of group consensus that this could be accomplished by demonstrating that they had instructed their managers not to practice any sort of discrimination.

So, everybody wanted an online Diversity course, which they hoped would provide some kind of immunity for managers against discrimination lawsuits. What, my bosses wondered, would such a miraculously effective course look like?

Really, nobody knew.

I attended conferences with CEOs and groups of managers of a variety of corporations who were my clients. They knew they wanted something. The kids coming into the workplace in that era were all rigorously indoctrinated in college in Diversity ideology and thought they had the answer. It might seem odd to you, but the great proponents of Diversity training were usually cute young women fresh out of grad school working in the HR department.

HR managers and CEOs loved these young women and often became sexually involved with them.

So, where was the content for the great Diversity online course to come from? Remember, at this time the huge bureaucratic corporate Diversity superstructure had not yet been erected. There were few, if any, "diversity consultant" businesses that had developed such courses and pre-packaged them for distribution.

Managers and CEOs didn't know where else to look, so they looked at me. Since I was developing the content management system and the online courses, I seemed like the obvious candidate to develop the content. So, my bosses delegated that task to me with vague directions to "look up" the research and publishing on the subject.

So, I did. And that was a nightmare. HR bureaucratese may be the dumbest, most impenetrable writing humans have ever devised. Diversity literature, so far as I could see, consisted of about three paragraphs of explanable ideas surrounded by an ocean of fluff. And the concrete ideas were just about all wrong.

I realized quickly that fluff was the point of the entire endeavor. My development team decided, in the great tradition of the dot-com era, to fluff up the online courses with "bells and whistles" to keep our students from falling asleep with boredom from the numbing emptiness and stupidity of the courses. "Eye candy" was thought to be important as well.

The CEOs and managers thought the courses were quite impressive and well produced. Yes, they were nicely crafted from a visual perspective and we made sure they were "interactive" and "user friendly." That there was no substance to the course didn't seem to bother anybody and I got paid, so what the fuck?

There you have it. My role in launching the great Diversity Crusade on a corporate level.

Kids who have grown up with this shit dominating their educational and professional lives must think that this shit is self-evidently true and substantive because every establishment institution tells them so. Kids, it's all bullshit. Started out as bullshit, and since then has been embellished by shoveling on successive layers of bullshit.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

I wasn't that far from the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. If the second plane hadn't smashed into the south tower, its flight path would have led it straight into my office. I don't have any doubt that the Jihadis will return for an even more devastating attack... this time probably a dirty bomb detonation in the financial district of Manhattan.

The casualties from the next attack are likely to number in the tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of refugees will flee the city to escape the radioactive debris. They will flee north into the Hudson Valley and west into Pennsylvania.

I live 100 miles away from what would most likely be the epicenter of the next attack, so I won't experience the direct affects. My home is so isolated in the mountains that refugees will probably not reach it. Not so for my kids and grandkids who live down in the valley. I've often wondered whether I should encourage them to move as far away from New York City as possible. I want them to live.

I'm not going to reconfigure my life in anticipation of such an attack. I'm an old man with only 10 to 15 years to live.